Death Sentence

by Sharkey, Joe;

  After the defense rested on the seventh day of the trial, the prosecution called a psychiatrist, Dr. Steven Simring, to rebut the testimony of a defense psychological expert who had declared John to be an “obsessive-compulsive” person who could not always make reasonable decisions when faced with a variety of options.

  In late March, Simring had interviewed John for four hours. In his trial testimony Simring disputed the defense contention that John was suffering from a clinical personality disorder. In fact, Simring asserted, John was suffering from nothing more than a situational depression of the sort that is usually referred to in lay terms as a midlife crisis.

  As courtroom spectators listened spellbound, the doctor went on to describe, often in the murderer’s own words, the utter banality of John List’s rationalization for murder:

  “My mother was a kind woman, overly concerned about my health,” John had said. “She always made sure I was overly warm … wearing my rubbers, my galoshes.”

  He remembered being spanked twice as a boy, once by his mother for a forgotten reason and once by his father, with a leather strap, for misbehaving in church. Otherwise, John described a childhood that was remarkably uneventful. “I’ve always been somewhat anxious about pleasing and not disrupting. I was well behaved in school, in the army, with my wife, and with my mother,” he said, describing both women as “strong-willed, domineering people” whom he strove mightily to please.

  Without emotion he discussed his marriage to Helen in 1951 after she had told him, apparently falsely, that she was pregnant. “I was always taught not to have intercourse before marriage. I slipped into it,” he said. On the eve of their wedding, “Helen told me she was very happy she wasn’t actually pregnant. I’m not sure to this day whether she was pregnant or not pregnant.”

  He recalled the years in Kalamazoo, which soon became clouded with marital and career problems. John resented what he regarded as Helen’s flirting with other men. “I once hit this guy for overdoing it,” he boasted. “Yes, for kissing my wife. There were other occasions when she overstepped her bounds.”

  Over the years, Helen complained often about their sex life, which even John conceded “wasn’t too good.” In their later years together, “she suggested erotic movies—porno. It helped our sex life.” But the films were nothing kinky, he added quickly.

  About his job problems, he at last seemed to have a glint of understanding. “I couldn’t delegate authority well,” he admitted. “I couldn’t supervise men and women who worked for me.”

  He recalled how his troubles intensified in Westfield. “I was unemployed,” he said. “I couldn’t do well at a job. I was borrowing from my mother. Helen was getting worse. I was praying something would happen. The pressure was building up. I couldn’t function. I was concerned at the way I was raised. I was always told to handle my own problems. My mother and Helen knew there were problems. I didn’t let them know how bad they were.”

  He said he was worried about Patty’s friends’ use of marijuana (he was not aware, however, that Patty smoked pot herself on occasion, or that she had become fascinated with the theatrical trappings of witchcraft). “I was concerned that she and the boys would drift away from the church,” he explained once again. “I couldn’t support them.… Finally, I broke and killed them.”

  Simring testified that before making his final decision, John had carefully “weighed his various options—killing himself, running away, which was an option. Unfortunately, he never considered the option of getting a job.”

  John told him, “I thought if I [killed them all], my family would all go to heaven and, at least later on, I would have a chance to go to heaven. However, if I committed suicide, there would be a hundred percent, automatically, that I would go to hell.

  “I kept praying. There was no income. There was no other solution. Finally, I decided it was the only way. It was a horrible thing, but once I started, I was like on auto-drive. I killed them all so that no one would survive. It’s like I had no control all the while I was doing it. It’s like some force, something that made me move, something beyond my control, and it just got started.”

  After shooting Helen and Alma, John recalled, “I cleaned up the mess. I don’t know what I did the rest of the morning, exactly.”

  Discussing how he had killed his eldest son later in the day, the murderer said, “John was different. His body had some jerky motions.” After shooting the boy nine times, he turned him over to finish him off. “I shot him in the heart, because I didn’t want to see him suffer,” John said.

  In leaving no survivors, John reasoned, “no one would have to think about what happened. That would be worse. It was almost with a sigh of relief that I killed them all and there weren’t one or two survivors. Looking back on such a horrible thing, if I had to do it over again, I’d find some other way. I’d try to get help.”

  Dispassionately, in what the psychiatrist called a businesslike voice, John discussed his escape:

  “I didn’t really think I would get away with it for more than a week or two,” he said. “When I got away with it for so long I was surprised.… I decided to stay free as long as I could. I might have had it in my mind to turn myself in, but I never gave it serious consideration. I was afraid of the consequences. I was afraid I would go to jail for a long time.”

  During his nearly eighteen years as a fugitive, John never gave a hint to anyone about his crimes. “I was enjoying my life,” he explained. “I didn’t want anything to disrupt my life. I didn’t want to burden anybody else.”

  By the time he was starting to gain traction in his new career in the restaurant business in Denver, he had already managed to come to terms with the horror of what he had done, he asserted. He did this through prayer each November 9. “I prayed for forgiveness,” John said. “After a while I only thought about it on the anniversary of their deaths.”

  Why had he left behind a detailed confession letter?

  “I had to tell somebody about what had occurred,” he told the psychiatrist.

  Why had he chosen Denver to hide?

  “I knew I wanted to head west. I always wanted to see the mountains. You know, Doc, this is a big country. It’s easy to lose yourself.”

  The jury and spectators sat in stunned silence as Simring finished recounting what John had told him. Simring then added his own assessment. In describing the murders, John “did not feel the enormity of guilt and remorse and sadness at the loss of his family. I think he’s a rather cold-blooded individual,” Simring said as the defendant stared at him impassively, one eyebrow slightly raised. The doctor found it remarkable that John had seen fit to lie in his confession letter about shooting the victims from behind. Nor did he give credence to John’s professed religious motivation. Actually, he suggested, John seemed to switch back and forth among various excuses “to suit his convenience.”

  Simring concluded, “He wanted grace in the hereafter, but he didn’t want arrest yet. There’s religious belief and there’s religious hypocrisy. I think there’s a fair amount of hypocrisy here.”

  Fittingly, John ultimately managed to find no support from the religion whose name he had so shamelessly invoked. Even ministers who had known him and sympathized with his problems over the years offered scant comfort when they were called by Miller to attest to John’s good character and to bolster a defense contention that suicide—the only unforgivable sin, in John’s eyes—had not been an option. By this stage of the trial, well aware that a verdict of second-degree murder was the best he could hope for, Miller realized that it was crucial to defuse a question that was certainly going to be asked in the jury room: If John had really, in some twisted sense, believed that he had legitimate religious reasons for killing his family, why had he not also then killed himself? Why had he instead chosen to lead a new life free from the liabilities of that family, and enjoyed that life of freedom for almost eighteen years? Why was he still alive?

  But the clerical witnesses declined to lend
support to the notion that John had managed to enjoy life after killing only because suicide was the single greatest sin. Reverend Edward Saresky, the List family pastor in Rochester, agreed that John had encountered serious difficulties managing his career at Xerox in the early 1960s, and said that Helen had made matters worse. Some in the courtroom were stunned to hear a minister suggest that Helen List might have had it coming.

  “She made a comment to me that was very painful,” Saresky testified. “She said that if John was half the man her former husband was, they wouldn’t have all the troubles they were having.” Yet Saresky wouldn’t be drawn into speculation about John’s excuses for murder. “Sin is still sin,” the minister conceded. “Grace is available for the sinner, but sin is never justified.” Saresky, though a key defense witness, helped Miller’s case not at all when he added his belief that John’s view of religion was inherently corrupt. “John’s problem is he knew doctrine, but he didn’t know faith. I think John did not trust God.”

  Reverend Alfred Scheips, who had been the Lutheran chaplain for the youth group John belonged to at the University of Michigan, also failed to come to the rescue. “Thou shalt not kill,” the minister intoned in response to Miller’s questioning on sin. “Taking a life is certainly wrong.” On cross-examination, Scheips described John as “a religious person, but not a fanatic.”

  Finally, it was the prosecution that framed the theological answer for the jury on cross-examination of Scheips, when he was asked whether there was a greatest sin, a sin for which there could be no forgiveness. Evidently, murdering one’s innocent wife, children, and mother in cold blood wasn’t at the top of the list in the clergyman’s estimation.

  The minister considered his reply for a few seconds before quoting C. S. Lewis: “Pride is the greatest sin.”

  Image Gallery

  John List about 1970.

  Helen List in the mid-1960s.

  (From left) Freddy, Johnny, and Patty List in Rochester, NY. The Lists used this as their family Christmas card in 1962.

  The house in Bay City, Michigan, where John List grw up, sleeping in the front parlor, which he would have to vacate during the day. The top floor was rented to tenants. (Nancy Sharkey)

  John Frederick List's old store in the Salzburg section of Bay City had seen better times by 1990. The name “List” can still be seen in the cornice. (Nancy Sharkey)

  (From left) Helen Taylor, Jean Syfert, and John List on October 13, 1951, the night they met outside a bowling alley in Fort Eustace, Virgnina. Helen and John were married less than two months later.

  The beaming new father, John List, with Patty, January 1955.

  Proud new grandmother, Alma List, shows off toddler Patty.

  Helen List and her children shortly after they moved to Westfield, New Jersey, in 1965.

  Patty's last high school photo, 1970.

  When John List attended this presentation of L’il Abner in Westfield in May 1971, he decided his daughter, shown here playing Stupefyin’ Jones, was bound for damnation. Police believe he began planning the murders around this time.

  The List family in 1971. (Left to right) John List; Patricia List; Helen List; John List, 15; and Frederick List, 13.

  Ed Illiano, eighteen years after he discovered the grisly tableau at the List house. (Carolyn D. Albaugh)

  The Westfield drama group receiving an award for a benefit performance for disabled veterans. Pat is fourth from left, with her hand on a friend’s shoulder. Ed Illiano is at right center, receiving the award.

  Bucolic Westfield, New Jersey, the town of the John List murders. (Carolyn D. Albaugh)

  The Westfield train station where John spent six months reading books and newspapers during the daytime when he was too embarrassed to tell his wife he had lost another job, in 1968. (Carolyn D. Albaugh)

  The ballroom at Breeze Knoll as it appeared in the 1920s. (Courtesy John Mittke)

  Redeemer Lutheran Church in Westfield, where the Lists worshipped and Patty sang in the choir. (Carolyn D. Albaugh)

  Bob Wetmore: a fugutive’s good friend in his new life in Denver, August 1989.

  Wanda Flanery, who identified her neighbor, Bob Clark, as wanted murderer John List.

  The trailer park at the foothills of the Rockies in the Denver suburbs where John List began to shape his new life as Bob Clark.

  St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, where John List, as Bob Clark, made a new start in his religion.

  John List after his arraignment in Richmond.

  Jean Syfert at her home in Midwest City, Oklahoma, August 1989.

  At her murderer’s instructions, Alma List was buried in Frankenmuth, Michigan, in her family’s plot (Nancy Sharkey)

  The List gravestone at Fairview cemetery. For years after the murders, Westfield detectives staked out the cemetery on certain anniversaries hoping John would pay a visit. (Carolyn D. Albaugh)

  Acknowledgments

  The material in this book was derived from interviews with people directly involved in the story, and from my own reporting across the country tracing the long and secretive odyssey of John Emil list. Where conversation is rendered, it is based on the recollection of at least one party who was involved. No characters have been invented; all of the names are real. I have tried to avoid going beyond known facts in presenting dramatic events; to the best of my knowledge, this is how it happened.

  I am very grateful to Jean Syfert, of Midwest City, Oklahoma, and to Edwin A. Illiano, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, for the long hours they spent with me over many months discussing a very painful part of their separate lives.

  I also wish to express my thanks to others who, for no reason other than a willingness to help a sometimes confounded reporter get the facts straight, contributed to this project. Among them are Betty Garter Lane, of Richmond, Virginia, and Gary Morrison and Bob Wetmore, both of Denver. In addition, John J. Henderson, of New York, offered early insight that subsequently proved to be most valuable. I want to commend the excellent facilities and helpful staffs of the public libraries of Westfield and Bloomfield, New Jersey, and of the Bay City and Frankenmuth, Michigan, historical societies.

  A note of thanks to newspaper friends who provided important encouragement and assistance: Steve Chambers, of the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press; Fred Brock and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal; Frank Scandale, of the Elizabeth, New Jersey, Daily Journal; Mark Johnson, of the Richmond, Virginia, Times Dispatch; Don Hecker of the New York Daily News, and Janet Piorko of The New York Times. Ed Gravely, of The New York Times technology department, kindly and expertly got me out of computer trouble a couple of important times.

  Many thanks to the multitalented Carolyn Albaugh, who worked long and hard on the photographs, in some cases miraculously coaxing faded snapshots back to life and, on several occasions, stepping behind the lens herself. More than once, Judson K. Albaugh, M.D., sagely navigated me from the perilous channels of speculative psychology and onto firm ground. Thanks also to Lisa Sharkey, Caroline Sharkey, and Christopher Sharkey for their encouragement and understanding, and for those long walks in the city. I also want to thank my parents, Joseph and Marcella Sharkey, of Cape Coral, Florida, who proved that a good marriage, well and honestly lived, is the real pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

  My agent, Jane Dystel, was a teacher and a friend; my editor, Michaela Hamilton, was patient and supportive when it counted most. Her guidance is greatly appreciated.

  Nancy Albaugh Sharkey, the finest journalist I know, selflessly took out an oar and helped to paddle through the white water on a couple of memorable occasions during this endeavor. I am most grateful for her help. It is to my wife’s standards of accuracy and empathy that this book aspires.

  About the Author

  Joe Sharkey was a weekly columnist for the New York Times for nineteen years. Previously, he was an assistant national editor at the Wall Street Journal and a reporter and columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer. The author of four books of nonfi
ction and one novel, Sharkey is currently an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Arizona. He and his wife live in Tucson.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 1990 by Joe Sharkey

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4175-1

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  180 Maiden Lane

  New York, NY 10038

  www.openroadmedia.com

  JOE SHARKEY

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Find a full list of our authors and

  titles at www.openroadmedia.com

  FOLLOW US

  @OpenRoadMedia